All That's Fit to Print
Noah and his creatures
Brenda Wall

I was cruising the news, looking for column fodder when I stumbled across a study launched by Missouri biologists. The group plans to follow the migration of snakes and to study just how many are RBC (runover by car) each year. The scientists are looking at ways to protect the snakes. My mama is rolling over in her grave.

The men in white coats chose the western cottonmouth as their snake subject. This is pure conjecture, but I wonder if they chose the cottonmouth because that was the one found RBC most often. It makes sense - study the group most impacted.

Can't you just see those guys out there scraping up dead snakes off the highway, trying to decide what they were originally?

"This looks like a rat snake."

"No, a rat snake's head doesn't look like that."

"Imagine it flattened by a pick up truck. Would it look like this?"

"You've got a point." Anywho, the scientists are implanting tracking devices in the tails of certain western cottonmouths to study how far they travel and to see how many of the asps are losing it on the asphalt.

Depending on what the study shows, the folks in Missouri might actually find some roads closed during snake migration periods. Apparently the whole balance of nature could be upended if too many girl snakes are smashed.

And, if studying ways to make more snakes isn't enough for you, Georgia Tech has a department studying yellow jackets. (I have to admit I didn't get the connection for about five minutes.) These guys actually go to people's houses and dig up their yellow jackets and take them back to the office.

Needless to say, the biologists sedate the jackets before attempting to remove them from their natural habitat. A little shot of ether calms them down while the nest is dug and put in a box. Back at the office, the box is refrigerated. Yellow jackets don't like cold weather. Room temperature yellow jackets are more ornery and try to chew out of their box.

Now personally, I've always felt the yellow jacket was one of the meaner, more despicable of the creatures Noah mistakenly took on the ark, but biologists don't necessarily feel that way. Apparently yellow jackets are quite amicable when mixing with their own and work hard as a team on yellow jacket-related tasks. From experience, I would say stinging people might fall into that category.

And maybe Noah didn't make a mistake when he brought on board some of the creatures most of us could do without. Somebody somewhere loves them, sees their value. If we are lucky, someone feels the same way about us.

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